


Survival

by somehowunbroken



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-30
Updated: 2012-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-30 08:37:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/329871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somehowunbroken/pseuds/somehowunbroken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sarah has never been one to dwell on her own past. There’s enough history in her line of work, and really, discovering the ancient world is much more interesting than thinking about things in her own life.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Survival

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cantarina1](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=cantarina1).



> A pinch hit for [](http://cantarina1.livejournal.com/profile)[**cantarina1**](http://cantarina1.livejournal.com/) in the [](http://clubstargate.livejournal.com/profile)[**clubstargate**](http://clubstargate.livejournal.com/) exchange. The prompt was _I have become my enemy and lived to tell the tale_ , with Vala, Chloe, Teyla, or Sarah Gardner. This is not a fic that I ever really thought I'd write, but I enjoyed doing it greatly. Ca'rina, I hope you like it :)

Sarah has never been one to dwell on her own past. There’s enough history in her line of work, and really, discovering the ancient world is much more interesting than thinking about things in her own life. This, though, it’s something that she can’t push aside, can’t drown in hieroglyphs and dig sites and someone else’s past.

This, Sarah knows, is something that she’ll never be able to get through, not completely.

She can make her own kind of peace with it, though, so that’s what she does. She throws herself into her work, pulls long hours, looks into everything that she can needle out of every source, and within eighteen months she’s found two new dig sites in the plains outside of Cairo. Sarah remembers Osiris in her head, mindlessly chatting about the Tau’ri and their stupid, useless habits, and a month before the two-year mark, she comes up with a third, a pharaoh from long enough ago that nobody figured the tomb would still be there, and the find is important enough to get her face splashed across most of the major news networks.

 _Sarah Gardner_ , the headline in the New York Times says. There are other things too, but the thing that captures her is her name, big and bold and italic, _her_ name.

It frees something in her, seeing her name in the paper. She’d spent three long years trapped in her own head, watching as her hands and mouth and legs worked outside of her control, seeing the endless violence and hearing Osiris’ whispered thoughts in her mind, _my last host served me for seven hundred years with the help of the sarcophagus, little one, how long will you last?_

Now, the thoughts in her head are her own, and when she picks up her phone and dials the number that Daniel had given her, she knows it's her idea, her fingers doing the work, her voice replying when Daniel says hello.

"Sarah," Daniel replies, in that tone of voice that says _I really never expected this, just wait a moment, let me find a stopping place_. It's so familiar, so near and dear despite time and distance and the pain that they've put each other through. She smiles and waits for him to collect his thoughts. "What's going on? Everything okay? Oh, hey, I saw the paper - three new finds, and one of them a pharaoh. That's great, I'm so happy for you."

And that's Daniel, she thinks fondly, all his thoughts right there at once, nothing to sort through.

"I'm doing okay," she replies, and they're off, talking about digs and research and a tablet that Daniel had purposely mistranslated just for the reaction he knew it would get out of Colonel O'Neill. She laughs in all the right places and so does he, and she has the feeling they both know it.

It's a while before the conversation winds down to the point that Sarah had known it would come to. "So," Daniel says, almost hesitantly, "how are you doing? Really doing?"

"Some days are better than others," Sarah says honestly, "but you know how that goes."

There's a moment of silence, both of them acknowledging the pain that neither of them can really share with anyone, not even each other. It's shared anyway, or it is in a way; the Goa'uld had taken everything from both of them, and they've both taken it back, if not exactly as they had lost it in the first place.

"Sarah," Daniel says, and it's gentle, kind. "There are - we have people you can talk to. I mean, other than myself, obviously - not that you can't talk to me, just that I'm probably not really qualified to give you the help that you might - not that you need help, I just-"

She cuts him off, laughing. "Daniel. I'm okay, really."

She's surprised to find that she means it. She's not back to who she was, but she won't really ever be, and she's making peace with that idea a little more each day. Daniel is silent for a few seconds before asking, "You're really okay?"

"I looked in the mirror this morning," she says. " _I_ did it, Daniel, not Osiris. I took a shower, I brushed my teeth, I got dressed, I went to work. I did things today, and Osiris is dead." She clears her throat before going on. "I looked in the mirror today and I saw myself. Sometimes that's all it takes to have a good day, really."

"That's a good day in my book," Daniel replies, and she can hear the smile in his voice, can see it in her mind if she closes her eyes.

They finish up their conversation not long after, pleasantries and vague plans to get together in the future, and when they hang up, Sarah tilts her head back and closes her eyes. She concentrates on the little things, the sun on her face and the feel of the corduroy of the sofa beneath her cheek, and relishes in stretching her legs out in front of her.

She’s putting the past behind here, little by little. Today really is a good day.


End file.
